Page 18 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

Doesn’t fix it. Doesn’t make it better. But it anchors me—just enough.

“Shit.” I drag a hand down my face, skin burning with tension. “I know.”

Silence stretches.

Then Gabe blows out a breath, rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. We’re both a little broken right now.”

A beat.

“I didn’t mean to snap.” I shift, jaw grinding. “I just?—”

“I know.” He cuts me off before I can finish. Not sharp. Not forgiving either. Just there—solid as always. “You’re not the only one losing your mind.”

He knows I’m strung tight. Knows I’m this close to cracking through the surface. And he doesn’t take it personally—never does. Not when it comes to Ally.

He lets the silence hang between us, the kind that doesn’t need filling. We’ve been here before. Different battlefield. Same war.

And I breathe—once, hard—grateful he knows when not to push, and how to steady the fire without putting it out.

I nod once. Slow. The weight of everything pressing against my spine.

Then I look him dead in the eye.

“We’re getting her back.”

“Yeah.” His jaw ticks. “We sure as shit are.” He’s as calm as ever. No pushback. No challenge. Just giving me space to burn.

And just like that, we’re aligned again. One mission. One woman. One war.

And we’re bringing all of it.

We’re both silent after that. Not because there’s nothing to say. Because everything we need to know is already between us.

“A submarine would explain the disappearance,” Ethan speaks up, his voice filling the silence.

“We’ve got SOSUS arrays monitoring the entire West Coast,” Sam reminds us. “No submarine signatures detected.”

“What about the facility breach?” I ask, shifting focus to the more immediate concern. “How did they penetrate Guardian HQ to begin with?”

This has been bothering me since the moment we found Jenna’s apartment. Guardian HQ is a fortress, equipped with biometric security, motion sensors, armed patrols, andsurveillance coverage. The fact that an extraction team walked in, took six women, and walked out is unprecedented.

Mitzy frowns, her hands stilling over her keyboard. “That’s the other problem. We’ve found no breach in the perimeter security system. No alarms. No unauthorized access points. Nothing in the logs.”

“That’s impossible,” Blake says, echoing all our thoughts.

“I know,” Mitzy replies, clearly frustrated. “I’ve been running diagnostics all night. The system shows normal operation throughout the entire event window.”

“Could they have hacked it?” Walt asks. “Inserted a loop in the security feed?”

“First thing I checked,” Mitzy shakes her head. “Our systems are isolated. External access would leave traces. There’s nothing.”

“They got in somehow,” I state flatly.

“There’s something else,” Mitzy adds, bringing up a new display. “We’ve been experiencing random electronic malfunctions across the compound for weeks. System glitches, power fluctuations, equipment failures. Initially, I thought they were isolated incidents.”

Dr. Skye Summers enters the command center, nodding briefly at Forest before joining the briefing circle. Her medical scrubs are rumpled, hair pulled back in a messy bun—she’s come straight from treating Max.

“How’s Max?” I ask.